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This article was written on 06 Sep 2017, and is filled under Non Fiction.

A Fret of Aging Rock Stars!

What’s the collective noun for a group of aging Rock Stars?

A Fret!

We’ve got plenty in stock so come and read about life in the limelight….or the dark alleyway?!

Springtime is the perfect time to turn over a new leaf!

TEX By Tex Perkins

Singer. Songwriter. Swamp child. Soul man. Tex Perkins is a true rock’n’roll animal. In this loud, uncut, no-holds-barred, laugh-out-loud and take-no-prisoners memoir, the enigmatic king of the Australian music underground lays bare an extraordinary life lived on the road, on the stage and on the edge.

DETOURS By Tim Rogers

A charming, honest, funny, sad, tender and beautiful literary memoir. Think Patti Smith meet Dylan Thomas, by way of Banjo Paterson. ‘Of all the utterances delivered to me by strangers, my least favourite after “We can no longer legally serve you” would have to be, “Well, that isn’t very rock’n’roll.”‘
Tim Rogers of You Am I has always been a complicated man: a hard-drinking musician with the soul of a poet; a flamboyant flâneur; a raconteur, a romantic and a raffish ne’er-do-well. In this offbeat, endearing memoir, Tim walks us through years jam-packed with love, shame, joy, enthusiasms, regrets, fights, family – and music, always music.
A work of real grace and tenderness, Detours is often impossibly sad and beautiful – but also full of wit, wordplay and punching jolts of larrikin energy to make you laugh out loud.
‘The good news is that our Tim can write. Every sentence trails a floaty scarf. A few of them have a floppy hat over one eye.’ Don Walker
‘A beautiful writer, Tim Rogers takes you where you want to go.’ Robert Forster

WORKING CLASS BOY By Jimmy Barnes

The time I have spent writing this book has caused me a lot of pain. Sometimes because of what I have remembered about my childhood and sometimes because of what I couldn’t remember. It is funny how your mind blocks things out when those things can hurt you. There are a lot of things I wish I didn’t remember…

A household name, an Australian rock icon, the elder statesman of OzPubRock – there isn’t an accolade or cliche that doesn’t apply to Jimmy Barnes. But long before Cold Chisel and Barnesy, long before the tall tales of success and excess, there was the true story of James Dixon Swan – a working class boy whose family made the journey from Scotland to Australia in search of a better life.

Working Class Boy is a powerful reflection on a traumatic and violent childhood, which fueled the excess and recklessness that would define, but almost destroy, the rock’n’roll legend. This is the story of how James Swan became Jimmy Barnes. It is a memoir burning with the frustration and frenetic energy of teenage sex, drugs, violence and ambition for more than what you have.

Raw, gritty, compassionate, surprising and darkly funny – Jimmy Barnes’s childhood memoir is at once the story of migrant dreams fulfilled and dashed. Arriving in Australia in the Summer of 1962, things went from bad to worse for the Swan family – Dot, Jim and their six kids. The scramble to manage in the tough northern suburbs of Adelaide in the 60s would take its toll on the Swans as dwindling money, too much alcohol, and fraying tempers gave way to violence and despair. This is the story a family’s collapse, but also a young boy’s dream to escape the misery of the suburbs with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to join a rock’n’roll band and get out of town for good.

WORKING CLASS MAN, the second installment is due to be released November 1st. Get up to date!

HIGH VOLTAGE: THE LIFE OF ANGUS YOUNG by Jeff Apter

‘How did such big balls get in such short pants?’ Steve Tyler of Aerosmith, speaking at the induction of AC/DC into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, on Angus Young

Angus Young, the co-founder and the last remaining original member of AC/DC, has for more than 40 years been the face, sound and sometimes the exposed backside of the trailblazing rock band. In his trademark schoolboy outfit, guitar in hand, Angus has given his signature sound to songs such as ‘A Long Way to the Top’, ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘Back in Black’, helping AC/DC become the biggest rock band on the planet.

High Voltage is the first biography to focus exclusively on Angus. It tells of his remarkable rise from working-class Glasgow and Sydney to the biggest stages in the world. The youngest of eight kids, Angus always seemed destined for a life in music, and it was his passion and determination that saw AC/DC become hard rock’s greatest act. Over the years, Angus has endured the devastating death of iconic vocalist Bon Scott, the forced retirement of his brother in arms, Malcolm Young, and more recently the loss from the band of singer Brian Johnson and drummer Phil Rudd. Yet somehow the little guitar maestro has kept AC/DC not just on the rails, but at the top of the rock pile.

BORN TO RUN By Bruce Springsteen

In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began.
Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.
He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work and shows us why the song “Born to Run” reveals more than we previously realized.

Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll.